"If You Were a Tree"...

1.28.2010
 

- "If You Were a Tree..."
 

On the morning after President Obama's first State of the Union address, during which the need for jobs was a key theme, we know (firsthand) that the pursuit of new employment can be a long, twisted journey.  Yet as all journeys are bettered with a little levity (and/or commiseration), we couldn't resist sharing this list of some of the strangest interview questions heard over the past year, compiled by glassdoor.com. (Doesn't anyone just ask you to "describe your past accomplishments" anymore?  Some of these are TOUGH)!

15 Top Oddball Interview Questions

1. What was your best McGuyver moment?  (asked at Schlumberger)

2. How many tennis balls are in this room and why? (asked at Yahoo!)

3. If you were a brick in a wall, which brick would you be and why?  (asked at Nestle USA)

4. How would you move Mt Fuji? (asked at Microsoft)

5. If two cars are traveling in a two lap race on a track of any length, one going 60 mph and the other going 30mph, how fast will the slower car have to go to finish at the same car to finish at the same time? (asked at Morgan Stanley)

6. Are your parents disappointed with your career aspirations? (asked at Fisher Investments)

7. Tell me how you would determine how many house painters there are in the United States? (asked at Acquity Group)

8. What should it cost to rent Central Park for commercial purposes? (asked at Bain & Co.)

9. If I put you in a sealed room with a phone that had no dial tone, how would you fix it?  (asked at Apple)

10. If you could be any animal, what would you be and why?  (asked at Pacific Sunwear)

11. If both a taxi and a limo were priced the exact same, which one would you choose? (asked at Best Buy)

12. What are 5 uncommon uses of a brick, not including building, layering, or a paper-weight?  (asked at Kaplan High Education)

13. Say you are dead- what do you think your eulogy would say about you?  (asked at Nationwide)

14. If you saw someone steal a quarter, would you report it?  (asked at Amazon)

15. Develop an algorithm for finding the shortest distance between two words in a document.  After the phone interview is over, take a few hours to develop a working example in C++ and send it to the manager.  (asked at Google - but take heart, it was specifically for software engineers)

You can read how others said they would answer these and other questions at glassdoor.com